Southwark Labour meets ambitious manifesto pledge on jobs

05 December 2017

Earlier
this month we achieved Southwark Labour’s ambitious manifesto commitment to supporting
5000 Southwark residents into employment. In 2014, we made this bold pledge at
a time when we lagged behind both the London and national figures for
employment, and many said it would be a challenge to achieve this in 4
years. So it is even more amazing to see we hit our target 6 months
early! Our leadership has gone beyond supporting 5000 residents into jobs
and has meant that Southwark has now overtaken the national and regional
employment figures.

This week,
at the Tate Modern we celebrated the number of residents we’ve supported into
jobs; accounting for 1 in 8 of all residents who started a job since the start
of this administration.
Behind
every job lies a life that has been transformed through our employment support
programmes and that is why we’ve launched a campaign to highlight the stories
behind the figures. A special “5000 lives Changed” Southwark Life edition
was distributed earlier this autumn, and Southwark Council have released
a video looking at the lives of two young residents transformed by the
councils employment support programmes. You can watch Ukaria
and Majeed tell their story here.

We are very
grateful for the work of our partners and Southwark Council staff who have done
so much to achieve this feat. As a Labour administration we know our work does
not stop when we support residents into employment, because far too many
residents in our borough are trapped in the vicious circle of insecure, low
paid and poor quality jobs.

So today,
we celebrate achieving our ambitious target but the work to support even more
residents into well-paid secure jobs starts tomorrow!